


Reverance of Flame

by Missing Nin (Baelavel)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 08:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30120063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baelavel/pseuds/Missing%20Nin
Summary: The Uchiha clan is no more. Massacred by one of their own. They lived passionate lives, they revered fire, they wielded fire. It's only appropriate that by fire they're given their final rest.A final rest that a young Uchiha Sasuke, now alone in this world, wasn't prepared to witness.
Kudos: 6





	Reverance of Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Some discussions with some friends led to this idea that the Uchiha clan likely cremated their dead. It made a lot of sense to me and the idea that Sasuke would have been there to witness the event hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt the overwhelming need to write it down and so here we are! I hope y'all enjoy it.

Sasuke Uchiha stared at himself with red-rimmed eyes in the mirror of the dimly lit apartment that had been given to him by the Sandaime. The hour was early enough that the windows were barely colored with the breaking of twilight. A single lamp was turned on to provide light to the room. The boy was enveloped in quiet stillness, with no one yet roaming the streets outside his window and none of the shops yet beginning their tasks to open. Only the ticking of the clock on his bedside table provided a rhythmic noise to break the hum of silence. The apartment was supposed to be his new home. Fully furnished and clothing had been brought to him from the Uchiha compound that had been his home for all of the seven years he had been alive. 

The Sandaime insisted that it was important to not visit there anymore, no matter how his heart called for it. He needed to move past the familiar walls, the beloved crest that proudly bedecked so many buildings and had been worn on the backs of all within. Sasuke needed a new start. He needed to move on.

To move on.

Move on.

Sasuke ran his hands over the black shirt he wore with his brow furrowing when his reflection caught a wrinkle at the bottom of the fabric. He looked down and smoothed his hands over the wrinkle again in vain as it stubbornly remained in place.

It’s wrinkled. 

But it can’t be wrinkled. Not this shirt of all shirts.

The boy’s lips pulled into a frown as he looked up and observed the chaos of his clothing thrown around carelessly.

Haphazardly.

Much like he always had done.

_“See Sasuke, this is why you need to keep things tidy and put them away.”_ He’d heard those gentle scolding words from his mother countless times as he lamented the state of one shirt or another. She’d take it from him with a ruffled of his hair.

He smoothed the front of his shirt again.

She’d chastise him for being messy and that it was a bad trait to have. How could he be a successful shinobi if he couldn’t keep his room neat? How could he succeed at missions? How could he join the police?

Another quicker run of his hands over the wrinkle. No. Still there.

She’d hum softly when she ironed the shirt. Sometimes she’d even sing. But there was always a smile. A warmth. Kindness and love. A sweet, safe, and nurturing love that made Sasuke’s entire world bright. Carefree. 

He rapidly ran his hands over the wrinkle. His eyes burned as a fresh slew of tears assaulted his senses. His vision blurred as the saline stung his eyes before falling down his flushed cheeks. A sob broke free from his sore throat that turned into a hiccup as his shoulders shook and his fingers gripped the bottom hem of his shirt until his knuckles turned white. 

Why this shirt. 

Why must this shirt of all shirts be wrinkled?

His mother would be disappointed if her youngest child arrived at a funeral wearing wrinkled clothing.

Her funeral, no less.

The sobs of the child, of the last Uchiha in Konoha, was the only sound in the dimly lit apartment save for the rhythmic ticking of the clock.

\---

Daybreak brought with it the warmth and light of the sun, but the young Uchiha boy was barely aware of his surroundings. His dark eyes were locked on the large wooden pyres that had been erected in the field that had once been a yard for training and play for the Uchiha clan. It, much like the compound itself, was no longer going to be used by Konoha. Sectioned off and forbidden due to the atrocities committed there.

The Uchiha’s home. Their safety and haven.

Sasuke’s heart clenched with fond memories now drenched in blood and screams when he listlessly followed the Sandaime on the way to the field. He longed for the feeling of joy and glee he always felt when walking through those gates. He wanted the heaviness in his chest to go away. To be greeted by smiling and familiar faces. Not these empty shops and homes. Barren. With memories of broken and bloody corpses littering his mind. 

The empty streets were better though than seeing the wooden pyres that had been carefully stacked with the bodies of his kin. 

Sasuke had been to a funeral pyre before. It was through fire that they honored their dead and fallen. It was through fire that they protected their Sharingan and ensured it could never be taken after they had passed.

He saw them.

He knew what to expect.

But where there had once been the stoic and rigid rock that was his father, the leader of the noble Uchiha clan, was now the thin Sandaime. Where before when tears pricked his eyes, he could take strength from the family who stood with him. 

Now stood strangers.

The cold and dispassionate eyes of Konoha’s council. The masked features of the half-dozen Anbu in attendance. The guarded features of the silver-haired shinobi that he knew only in passing as Hatake Kakashi. The haggard exhaustion of Sarutobi Hiruzen. 

Sasuke kept his gaze locked on the pyres and schooled his features into a forlorn attempt at mimicking the strength Uchiha Fugaku always portrayed. His fingers still brushed against the single wrinkle in his black shirt before he clenched it between both fists to hide it from sight. He needed to be strong. For his parents, his family, his clan. He needed to be strong.

Only strength would help him avenge those who had fallen.

He needed to be strong.

He needed to be stronger.

A sudden weight on his shoulder startled Sasuke from his thoughts. He drew in a sharp breath and turned his head to view the saddened smile of the Hokage as he gestured toward the pyres with his other hand.

“It’s customary for an Uchiha to be the one to light the flames.”

An Uchiha. To light the flames.

Well of course. It had always been his father who would wield the jutsu that their clan was so well known for. He’d ignite the wood and it is with the fire of another Uchiha, that the body would burn the soul was given its last respect.

His father--

“Sasuke? Do you think your fire jutsu is strong enough?”

Sasuke’s breath caught in his throat. Of course. There was no other Uchiha. There was only him. Him alone. 

Only him.

Sasuke’s head turned forward and his dark eyes took in the sight of the pyres once more before he nodded with his brow tightly knitting together. He took a dozen steps forward and clasps his hands together to form the first seal.

Snake. 

Chakra swirled within him and brought with it a new jump in heart rate. The familiar burn of tears sprang up into his eyes. Tears that fell unhindered.

Ram.

He still remembered when he had been learning seals. He remembered his father laughing and ruffling his hair as he successfully formed each one with little stumbling. His parents sat at a table with tea. His mother was patching a shirt. His father read the newspaper.

Monkey.

Sasuke drew in a sharp breath to try and steady his breathing and choked on a sob. Strength was rapidly seeping from his muscles and joints. His knees shook, his shoulders trembled, and every part of him ached as his chest rapidly fell and rose. He could see little past the blur of tears, only the outline of the pyres that bore everyone he held dear. He was weak. So weak. So incredibly weak. So weak Itachi saw no reason to waste his blade on him.

Boar.

Screaming. There was so much screaming. So much blood. He knew their faces. Itachi felt nothing. He drove his blade through them as if they were animals to slaughter. They were all dying. His family. All dying. All dying from the hand of someone all of them loved and trusted. Sasuke could barely feel his hands. Could barely feel his feet or knees. He could barely feel his body and all he could hear was the screaming.

Horse.

Sasuke gasped for breath as his lungs burned. His diaphragm contracted and spasmed with each desperate attempt for breath and his tears only flowed stronger from the effort.

Tiger.

He willed his body to calm. He willed himself back to the present. Away from the screaming, the yelling, the blood. He tried to feel his hands again, to feel anything other than the sting in his eyes and the burning of his lungs. Sasuke drew in a deep breath and mingled his chakra with the oxygen. The seals changed the chakra's nature. He’d done it so many times.

His father had been proud.

Sasuke choked on the air. He coughed, sputtered, and only hot breath and a lick of embers erupted from between his lips. The coughing turned to a scream as his knees gave way and he fell forward. Hiccuping sobs interrupted his yelling. His hands gripped the green grass beneath him and all he could see was his brother’s sneer. Mocking him for his weakness.

Thin arms with a surprising amount of strength behind them pulled Sasuke to his feet. Fingers gripped his shoulders and held him tightly, keeping him upright even as his knees threatened to buckle again and sobs continued to tear through his sore and grief ravaged throat. Voices spoke around him. Some quiet and only one kind. 

“--someone else can--”

“--needs to be done.”

“He’s just a boy.”

“I have a Sharingan I--”

A figure pushed past him and the Sandaime. A figure cloaked in black and their face obscured in the mask of the Anbu.  
“Wait, the Uchiha should be honored by someone who at least--” The last voice spoke again but was silenced by Hiruzen raising a hand. 

“This is fine.”

The figure’s head turned and Sasuke rose his blurry gaze and reddened features to meet the veiled eyes of the shinobi. He felt his breath catch again and it came again with the prick of fresh tears. Tears that he desperately fought to hold back. The stoic image of his father played through the mind of the boy. A stoic image of a man who let nothing break his composure. A stoic image that was replaced with the cold calculating gleam of his brother’s sharingan.

The cloaked shinobi turned away from the gathering and lifted the mask they wore to uncover their mouth. The signs were seamlessly formed and when they exhaled their breath it was in a magnificent billow of flames that fully engulfed the first pyre and ignited it with a roar of flames. The heat burned Sasuke’s face from the distance he stood and the smoke quickly began to cast a haze on the field as pyre after pyre was ignited in the same fashion as the first.

Breath that was already difficult to gain was given a new challenge.

Eyes that tried not to shed another tear watered and encouraged the flow to begin again.

Through the smoke and flames, he could see the fire licking the bodies that had once housed the souls of the people he loved. What he thought was another sob found life as a scream that tore at his raw throat and fell off in a hoarse hiccup. The first became a second and this time with a desperate plea for his mother. The third for his father. And the fourth an incoherent cry for the absolute destruction of the love once held for a brother.

He yelled until he could barely make a sound and even then still he cried. Still, he sobbed. Still, he couldn’t shake the heaviness in his chest or the cold dread that burned through his veins. He had no one. Nothing. The last remnants of his clan were burning with the acrid smell of copper, meat, and hair mingling together into a stomach-churning stench. Sasuke began to heave as nausea swept over him from the smell and the newfound pounding of his head, but he’d eaten nothing for his body to regurgitate.

By the time Hiruzen released the child, Sasuke stood limply in place with no more tears to shed and a mind sluggish and blank from the turmoil that had ravaged it.

\---

Night fell but the flames still burned.

There were too many bodies for it to be a quick process. A pair of Anbu had been tasked with keeping the fires stoked and to ensure the cremation of a once noble clan was complete. The acrid stench tainted and hung heavy in the air, as did the smoke that still billowed heavily from the pyres. Where there had once been a small group of people watching at the beginning of the burning, there was now just one.

A small boy of no more than eight sat on his knees and stared listlessly at the flames. His lips were partially parted and his skin was pale and ashen in complexion. The dark clothes of his mourning blemished with flicks of ash that the wind had blown from the pyres.

The scene was viewed from afar by a cloaked shinobi, with an Anbu mask obscuring their features from sight. They crouched within the branches of a nearby tree, the crimson of their Sharingan locked on the figure of Uchiha Sasuke for a moment longer before they turned and jumped to the ground below. They broke into a run immediately away from the compound. Away from Konohagakure no Sato.


End file.
